Thinking about a puzzle theme

What do you all think...I don't want to really do a heavy decorative theme because We have stuff going on all the time. I thought I could do puzzle pieces with we all "fit" together, etc. to show teamwork and such. Also I wanted to put up a BOGGLE BB and someone posted a math BOGGLE so I could start with regular and switch to math and keep up the same board.

As one of our beginning of the year projects, I have each child decorate a large puzzle piece with art materials (for older kids maybe they could decorate the piece to tell something about themselves) and I display the completed puzzle on a bulletin board all year long to show we are a team and we need each other. I've seen you can buy large blank puzzle pieces but I just took one of my large floor puzzles and traced the pieces onto cardstock and cut them out. On the backs, I wrote the "coordinates" like top left or 2nd row, 3rd from left so we'd be able to fit it back together again. And I wrote my students names large across the piece in permanent marker so then, if it mattered, all their designs would be facing the right way.

To keep the theme simple, you could easily label the areas of your room by writing the names on large puzzle pieces & displaying them. I was trying to think of possible names along the puzzle theme but maybe just using the pieces would tie things together nicely.

I love using the team work idea & the idea that in order to be "complete," or a full picture, we need everyone there & participating!

I know that smilemakes.com and Mardel have a large apple bulletin board set that's cut into puzzle pieces that says "we all fit together" and you can write each childs name on one of the pieces.

I also like the idea of have a blank puzzle piece and have each child decorate it somehow to describe themselves and then put the pieces together to make the bulletin board and have the saying "we all fit together" above it.

I make a large puzzle out of poster board. On the center piece, I put "Good Behavior Completes the Puzzle." I then laminate all pieces. The other five pieces surrounding that one are used to write the classroom rules on when we come up with them together on the first day. (I just write them on with a Vis-a-Vis marker.) We put the puzzle together and stick it in a conspicuous place using the sticky putty. Then, throughout the year, if we need to work on a rule, we take the puzzle piece off and put it on the whiteboard for the day. I encourage the class to complete the puzzle by working on that behavior. When they are doing better, I reward them by putting the puzzle piece back in the puzzle.